Kellyanne and George Conway: A modern marriage in the age of Trump? Or a couple in crisis?
Perhaps the couple is playing a competitive political game. But that’s still a dangerous script for a relationship.
By Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research at the Council on Contemporary Families
Should we be worried about Kellyanne and George Conway? As a historian of marriage, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the relationship between President Donald Trump’s senior counselor and her husband. George’s increasingly scornful tweets about Trump’s competence and honesty, which imply that Kellyanne’s work defending her boss is a disservice to the nation, have long marked their marriage as unusual.
But the temperature increased noticeably — and very publicly — a few days ago, when George accused Trump of suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. Trump responded that George was a “total loser” and the “husband from hell.” When asked whether it was appropriate for a boss to comment on an employee’s marriage and to attack her husband, Kellyanne counter-attacked, asserting that Trump was well within in his rights to respond when “somebody, a non-medical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder.”
My decades of experience researching both the history of marriage and its modern evolution suggest that for any normal couple, what we’ve seen the past few days would raise serious red flags. However, this is not a normal couple, so some unusual variables need to be considered. Let me explain.
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